


All Good Things

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:38:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words have never been John’s forte.  Actions are.  Why then, is this so difficult?</p>
<p>He could get up.  He could walk the short distance across the room, lay a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, wait for him to look up, squeeze, hope that Sherlock sees.  He could do that.  He wants to.  But, somehow he can’t, and it’s killing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Good Things

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [好的事情](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7774732) by [CheerW](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerW/pseuds/CheerW)



> I know, I know... I explore the themes of love confession and first kiss far too often, but I just love it so much, all the potential ways it might happen!
> 
> This is another of those 'tumblr only' fics I'm porting over here now I've shuttered my tumblr.
> 
> Enjoy.

John needs Sherlock to take the first step, but he doesn’t know if that is something Sherlock will ever do.It’s driving him mad, this—this tension strung so tight it has no option but to snap—violently even.And John doesn’t want it that way.Not after everything, not after all these years, all this waiting, not after all the walls they’d erected to divide and keep them apart have finally begun to crumble, have been dismantled or blown asunder, in the last year. 

There have been too many cataclysms in John Watson’s life.  For once he wants something gentle.  Enough crash landings.  Time for a safe place to fall.

Words have never been John’s forte.  Actions are.  Why then, is this so difficult?

He could get up.  He could walk the short distance across the room, lay a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, wait for him to look up, squeeze, hope that Sherlock sees.  He could do that.  He wants to.  But, somehow he can’t, and it’s killing him. 

He looks up from his laptop, and across the lounge to Sherlock’s too-thin body hunched over his microscope, long fingers fiddling with the fine focus nob.  His hair is still damp from the shower.  They are staying in today, and Sherlock has been more lax with his personal grooming on those days when they have decided, unequivocally, to be domestic, to not take clients.  He looks young, vulnerable, with his fringe flopping over his forehead, and a soft halo of frizz forming as his curls dry in the warm, dry air of the flat.  His feet are bare.  His toes tap out an unconscious staccato on the floorboards of the kitchen.  He lets out a tiny grunt of frustration, and then turns and scribbles something in quick, vehement scratches, in the notebook beside him.

John loves him.

He knows this, now, without a shadow of a doubt.  Perhaps he’s known it for years, and had just been afraid to let himself…  But no—even that isn’t true.  He did let himself.  And then Sherlock was gone, and there is a place deep in John’s heart, where he thinks the wound of that will never fully heal.  Like the scar tissue surrounding his old shoulder injury, it aches, and holds him back at the oddest times.  But, today is not one of those times.

“Sherlock.”

“Mmm…”  He’s scowling back through the microscope, a new slide now.  He’s only half paying attention.

“I love you.”

The already quiet flat seems to grow more hushed.  John sees Sherlock’s toes still.  A muscle twitches in his jaw. 

This was not how John had planned it.  John is not the one to say the important things.  That is not his role.  So why now?  Why this?  _Oh Christ…_

Sherlock sucks in a breath, and sits back, away from the microscope.  He stares straight ahead for a moment, before finally turning to look directly at him.  “I beg your pardon?”

John doesn’t look away.  He’s proud of himself for that small act of courage afterward.  He’s not sure how he managed it.  “I said, I love you.”

Sherlock’s lips part, his mouth hangs open, and he simply stares.  In fact it’s slightly unsettling in it’s intensity, and John’s not even sure that Sherlock is still fully with him when he finally continues.

“I said, I love you, and what I meant was…”  John takes a deep breath, releases it slowly, let’s his heart slow.  “What I meant was that I’m in love with you.  I mean I—I love you, too, obviously, but I—I’m in love with you, and I…”  He swallows dryly, suddenly out of words.  “Well, I’ve wanted to say it, and I’ve said it, so—so there.”

Sherlock doesn’t move.  Several moment pass in tense, pregnant silence.

John sees the moment Sherlock’s brain clicks back to awareness.  He stands up suddenly, strides over to John’s chair, and drops to his knees in front of him. 

John’s hands are resting on his thighs, and he stares down at them as Sherlock lifts his hands and places them over John’s—over John’s hands, over John’s knees.  Sherlock’s hands are unforgettably large, and surprisingly warm and careful.  He glides his hands, once, up the length of John’s forearms, and back down to his hands, where he stops, rests, waits.

Something inside of John wakes up.

Sherlock sees it. 

His eyes travel swiftly, an efficient assessment of every inch of John’s body: respiration rate, body temperature, pupil dilation.  John has learned to recognise the physical tells when Sherlock’s brain is taking in data.  And then he stops, just as quickly.  He looks up at John from beneath thick lashes, and there is something open, and hopeful in his gaze.

He nods.  “Good.  That’s good.”

John feels a weight he hadn’t even realised he was carrying lift from his shoulders.  “Is it?”

Sherlock nods again.  “Yes.”  His lips part, as though he wants to say more, but the words won’t come.  Sherlock, always the talkative one, wholly without words.  What an weird thing.  What a wonder. 

And then those hands are moving again, sliding up John’s arms, around his elbows, dipping beneath, around his waist, and Sherlock is pulling himself into the V of John’s legs, and pressing his cheek to John’s chest, and John feels his heart squeeze tight, stutter in awe, and restart again in a rhythm familiar, yet new, like a forgotten childhood dream that suddenly springs to mind afresh.  John lifts his arms, one hand to trace the length of Sherlock’s spine, the other to bury his hand in Sherlock’s hair. 

They fit.  As John always suspected they would, as they’ve always done.

John can finally breathe, four decades locked up in the dank and the dark, and suddenly the windows and doors he’d never even realised were there have been flung open. 

He feels Sherlock let go, in his arms.  A tension in his muscles loosening, a warmth and wetness seeping through the thin cotton of John’s T-Shirt to baptise the flesh over his heart.  And suddenly it’s not enough.  It’s not near close enough, not near warm, or tight, or encompassing enough.  He lifts his other hand to tangle in Sherlock’s curls, he brings his thumbs to Sherlock’s temples, urges his head back.  He wants to see.  He needs to see all of it, everything Sherlock is feeling in this moment, for Sherlock to see all of him, and he needs Sherlock to show him just what might come of it all.

Sherlock’s eyes are closed, lashes damp.  This is hard.  John soothes circles at his temples until those eyes open, pale, and dark all at once. 

_Oh…_

When their lips meet it feels like home, like the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, right in the middle of a rather long, but enjoyable novel.  Things will change.  But it’s not an end, and it’s not a beginning—not really.  It’s just—it’s what they’ve always been, but it’s evolving, growing…

And Sherlock is right ( _isn’t he always, somehow_ ).  It is good.  It’s very good.


End file.
